


A Taste of rhum and Essos

by Pastel_sxul



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Game of Thrones - Freeform, Game of Thrones References, a song of ice and fire - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-26 07:33:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10782360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pastel_sxul/pseuds/Pastel_sxul
Summary: Sandor Clegane successfully brought Arya to the Eyrie and has headed south to Pentos where, as he just wanted to find a job or drink himself to death, he ends up bumping into such a small and buggeringly stubborn little blond haired woman who will lead him to meet again with some faces of his past.





	1. Prologue : She smelled of flowers and spices

Clegane shifted in the linen covers. Half asleep, half dreaming, he saw long strands of hair, blond and shiny as the Lannister's gold, playing in front of him, dancing with some imaginary wind. He could almost smell them, smell her. She smelled of flowers and spices he remembered. In his haze, he also saw the pale, oister green pupils and how purely they shone for him that night. For once there was no pride, nor laughter, not even a single bit of mischief in her eyes. Only something that looked like pure, almost childish, amazement. And the lips. He felt the lips too.  _You're going crazy Clegane_ , he thought as he felt her lips, her pretty pink lips, against his. They were soft and smilling as they moved against his. They tasted of the rhum she loved to drink and the dates she liked to eat.

He shifted again, trying to find a comfortable position. He wanted to sleep. But there was nothing to do. Whatever position he tried, pictures of her kept playing in front of his eyes, shaking him awake everytime sleep tried to release him from missing her.


	2. Strange little thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really sorry about the lenght of this chapter. They'll get longer as the story goes on, I promise.

The street was empty. And silent. It was the silence that hit Clegane the most. Only barely a bird chirping once in a while to break that silence. It was dawn. A far, behind the broken line of the rooftops, the burning red light of the rising sun edged the horizon. Brushing his hands over his face, he groaned. Soon enough, the familiar pain of a headache encircled his skull.  
  
Looking around, he soon found out that he ended up in the posh part of the city, where the high society lived in pretty houses dressed in pretty clothes and drinking pretty wine in pretty goblets.  
  
Breaking the silence, the whirring of the leafs of a tree made him jump in surprise. Quickly he indentified the source of the noise. In the vagueness of his hangover, he couldn't see wether it was a boy or a girl, but what was certain was that the person perched in the tree was shaking the hells out of a branch of an enormous date palm.  
  
He sat up a little straighter and then tried to get up. The thing is, his legs, and even his entire body, weren't ready. Sighting and groaning again,  he leaned forward and rubbed his face in hope of getting a little closer of full awareness. In vain.  
  
The whirring continued and he swore that in any other circumstances, he would have beat to death the fucking cunt who was making all that noise.  
  
He was fuming with rage when it stopped. And then, the author of all that disturbance came down from her branch. The girl - judging by how long where her hair - seemed short, really short, slender, with the longest hair Clegane had ever seen. It failed to below her butt cheeks.  
  
She was trying to cut out a clutcher almost as big as her.  
  
Getting comfortable, Clegane observed her with amusement as she was battling with the huge bunch of fruits. Standing ontop of the wall beneath the tree, she looked like a clumsy little golden kitten. _And what will you do with that enormous clutcher once you've cut it out little cat_? Sandor wondered.  
  
She was interrupted by the arrival of the owner of the tree. Clegane didn't see him, but he heard the doors open behind the wall and the man shout at the girl in valyrian. Without thinking twice, she jumped down the wall, taking some fruits with her as soon as the doors openned.  
  
Once back on the ground, nonchalantly, after one  last look at the date palm, she went, long golden hair flowing behind her as she ate her plunder. Looking back at the wall, he wondered how such a small person could have climbed ontop of it. But his wonders were quickly chased out of his mind as she stopped across of him, studying Clegane from the other side of the street. She did not stop eating her dates, he noticed.  
  
For a moment she stood there, her eyes fixed on him. And then, with the same nonchalance, she left.  
  
No words spoken, no signs exchanged, she did not even moved as she was scrutinizing him. Clegane still felt troubled by the weight of her gaze moments after she left in the same silence as when she was starring.  
  
Even as he was wandering in the streets, trying to find some rich fat lord to serve as a guard or a sellsword, he remembered what seemed to be pale eyes, fixed on him. _Surely wondering how could a man be that ugly_ , he assumed. From where he was, she looked pretty.  
  
Taking a look around, he noted that blond people were rare in Pentos and that he hadn't met any real pentoshi with the same golden hair as the little cat he saw that morning.  
  
And, as always, pictures of the little Stark bird came playing in his mind, chirping and chirping, peeping at him, stinging him with small beaks that had the talent to torture his mind. He knew he should have take her with him. He knew it. He regretted not to. And now, whenever his mind wandered as much as he did himself, thoughts of her came and took over his entire mind, drowning him in a kind of liquid fire where lust, regrets and guilt melt.  
  
He abandonned the idea of swimming away from that damned melting long ago.  
  
But right now, in between the pictures of flaming curls and sad blue eyes; long, so fucking long, golden strands, pale eyes starring at him in the distance and that little body ontop of the wall, came dancing and haunting him the same way the little bird did. _Fucking bird and fucking kitten_ , he swore in his mind, _buggering me with all your pretty faces and pretty hairs and pretty bodies._  
  
And even when he started drowning the deception of another day without a job to give a little meaning to his existence in a sea of wine and ale and everything that he could drink, he thought of them. Of the little red bird and the little golden cat. They came playing in the drunk haze of his mind; the tall, pale, red haired one looking sad and innocent as always and the other, the unknown, short, slightly tanned, blond haired, looking so clumsy, carelessly adorable as she jumped down that wall and walked away.  
  
He saw her again and again looking at him without a single move or a single word, he saw her again and again between the pictures of Sansa, as he slowly slid in a drunk sleep, sat against another wall in another street, waiting for another day of bored wandering.


	3. Reflection

"For god's sake Marley Ohara, where were you?" Meagan said, all upset and angry. "Stealing dates again I bet. Your grandm...". "She'll laught and ask how many I stole" cut Marley, mindlessly eating a dried fig as her servant sighted. "You know what I think? I think that you should be grounded Marley. It's not ladylike to run the streets dressed like a boy stealing fruits at dawn." Meagan carried on. Marley rolled her eyes. _And pissing the Seven Hells out of me, is that ladylike?_ , she thought. However, they could ground her as much as they wanted. She'd find a way way to escape her room,to do absolutely everything but what they would want her to.

Meagan kept on ranting about how she could be such a disobedient, stubborn, extravagant, insolent young woman, when in reality she was just a sweet and witty child. But Marley did not listen. She thought about that man. The one she saw half asleep and maye still drunk in the streets. She could not put her finger on it, but he reminded her of something. He was just on the other side of the paved road, but he was already too far for her to see his face properly, but -as it seemed through her shortsighted eyes- it looked like half of his face was badly scarred. Thinking of it, she understood. That was it. That was the scarred side of his face that reminded her of this thing she couldn't find.

She had to tell lord Varys. Or lord Tyrion. Or even both. And so did she. They would know. They knew everything. 

She stood up without a word, took one last dried piece of fruit and left the room, leaving there a wordless Meagan.

She found lord Varys and lord Tyrion on the great balcony. The short one was drinking himself to death, just as he did since they arrived, and the cockless one was smartly begging him to stop.

She just sat at the small round table, listenning to the arguments of the Spider -as they called him-, waiting for her turn to speak.

"It seems that my lady wants to speak" interrupted the Imp, "Perhaps you should hear what she has to say before starting over to try to convince me that I'm  _Greater_ and  _Smarter_ and  _Better_ than I think I am". Varys would have responded if Tyrion hadn't gestured toward Marley, reminding the eunuch that she wanted to speak.

"I saw a man this morning" she started "He was dead drunk or had been a few hours ago. Brown haired, tall, muscular. And, he had a scar. All over the right side of his face. It was too far for my blind ass to see clearly, but it looked like he had been burnt. I didn't know why, but it rang a bell in my mind. At the moment, I didn't knew what it was, but know I recall. Once you told me about a man, a king's guard. Sandor Clegane. I think it was him."

They looked at her in surprise. It made her feel like she had just say something stupid. She would have wished she could disappear and make them forget everything she'd said if lord Tyrion hadn't spoke. "You say you saw Sandor Clegane, the Hound?" he asked. Marley nodded. The Imp gave a queer glare at Varys. "Are you sure it was him?" asked again the little lord. Marley shrugged, "Well, he looked exactly like what you told me Sandor Clegane looked like". It was their turn to nod. Varys stepped closer to were she sat and leant on the table. "Could you follow him? And... maybe" he looked at Tyrion, unsure. The midget nodded once again. "And maybe try to bring him here" continued the Spider.

Marley didn't know wether to say yes or no. Yes, she could creep through the streets without a noise, like a little ghost. But follow, spy on someone? She never really did it. Neither did she ever tried to bring a stranger at Master Ilyrio's house. Plus, he looked and was known as dangerous. And she, she was just a slight, five feet tall little woman. All she could do was hide herself pretty well or run pretty fast. Wich, if such a gigantic man catched her, was useless. Or maybe she could try to hide in the palm of his hand, but that one was quite difficult thing to do.

"He could... you know, be helpfull for... our project" started again Varys. And Marley nodded. She did nod. Not that she knew if she would be able to do it, but she could try. "Give me a day or two, to think about how I am going to do it, and I'll start." she promised. They thanked her with a look of gratitude and she left.

How in all the gods could you do to spy on someone? That was the real question. The second was how do you find a complete stranger in such a big city? She couldn't just rummage throught the whole city to find one man. He could be anywhere.That'd take too long, Varys and Tyrion would be long gone when she would find him. Or he would be long gone when she'd find his track. 

 _Time to have my own little birds?_ she asked herself. That would be a solution. She could make her own researches and make some little birds search for her too. Things would be a lot faster then. But it raised a third question. How do you choose your little birds? She was Varys's central bird at Pentos since a long time, collecting informations from the others little birds and giving them to Master Ilyrio who then would write them in a letter and send it to King's Landing. The Spider choosed her for that task because she was close to Master Ilyrio. But how did he selected the others little birds? Did he even selected them? And, why not just ask those little birds to find the Hound? She was in no hurry to form her own network of informers. She could use Varys's. She didn't think he'd mind. And there again, he knew everything thanks to his little brids, but if his little birds didn't say it, how would he know? 

As she was thinking, she headed to the gardens, where her grand mother was waiting for her. They had to talk about marriage. At nineteen years old, five years after bleeding for the first time, it was abnormal that she was still to marry. Not that she or her grand mother cared, but it was necessary. Without the spice trade of her parents to make their living, it was a need. Marley was't happy about that. Marrying a stranger, giving him her virtue, spending the rest of her life with him was not to make her jump for joy. She'd always knew it would happen, but she'd always hoped it would as late as possible.

She found her lady grand mother at the same place as usual. "I've heard that you've upset Meagan again" teased lady Maelinor Ohara. Marley smiled maliciously. "How many?" asked her dowager. "I wanted to take to whole bunch but the geezer came out so I jumped down the wall and took about ten dates" explained Marley. Her grand mother laughed, "Those bunches are almost bigger than you Marley, what would you have done with it?". Marley shrugged, "Well, eat them" she said, immediatly realising how hilarious that sounded. Plus, the look lady Maelinor gave her confirmed her impression. "I could have share it with you, and I could have brought some to the kitchens so they could dry them." she kept on, making her grand mother laught.

"Well, enough banters. We have some serious matters to talk about." said the dowager, putting herself together. Marley pouted comicaly. She had a real talent for that. Making funny faces or having funny gestures because of how clumsy and sarcastic she was really was her thing. "Don't sulk" ordered lady Mealinor. The serious tone she used worried Marley. "You found someone" she assumed. "No. This is why we have to talk. Believe it or not, but knowing that you run the streets dressed like a boy, sometimes barefoot, and that you're kind of extravagant and atypical mind isn't to bring your potential husbands to want you as a wife". "Those boys are stupid." declared Marley, thanking herself for being this way and those boys for being stupid, "Their matter if they want to spend the rest of their lives with some boring, classical, hung up lady who only repeats what she's told and would never have or speak her opinion.". Her grand mother starred at her. She looked deep in thoughts and somehow proud of her grand daughter. 

That look of pride warmed Marley's heart. She didn't really gave a damn about making others proud of her, but lady Mealinor was someone she had always admirred, always looked up to. It felt good to make someone as remarkable as her lady grand mother proud.

"If I didn't knew you, I'd think it upsets you" said lady Mealinor with irony. 

Marley was about to sneer when she remembered something. With that Sandor Clegane matter, she was about to run the street more than ever. That wouldn't help for sure. But she gave her word to lord Varys and Tyrion. She didn't had a real code, but breaking a promise wasn't something she allowed herself to do. "There's something I have to tell you" she announced, suddenly quiet and grave. "Go ahead, tell me" allowed her grand mother. "I'll have to creep in the streets to spy on someone for lord Varys. Spying on that person will certainly lead me to go to the dodgy areas of the city" explained Marley.

Lady Mealinor sighted, visibly not that happy about it. "Did you gave your word?" she wanted to know. Marley gave her a guilty look. The dowager sighted once again. "After that, I want you to get your own spies" she ordered. Marley nodded. "How long will it take?" asked again her grand mother. "Long enough for me to bring him here.". Lady Mealinor frowned. "Bring him here? Why?" she inquired. "They think he could... help them for the Targaryen matter" accounted Marley. Her lady grand mother looked even less happy. "They're involving you in it. I don't like that. I'd rather see you stealing a whole tree than being a part of that mess" she grinded. "It was my decision to be a part of it" reminded Marley. Her dowager shook her head, visibly upset. "I can't get why you're so stubborn about that. You don't have anything to do with Westeros." she pointed. "Our business has something to do with Westeros. Some of the lords living there were part of our best clients and will be when I take father's business over. If Westeros falls, half of our income falls with it." pleaded Marley. 

Lady Mealinor sighted again, louder. She firmly fixed her eyes in Marley's. That pale but intense green gaze would have make anyone look away. But Marley wasn't anyone. She was far too proud to look away. "Tell me Marley Ohara, how can you be so sure Westeros will fall?" she queried, her voice thrilling with anger. For all their common points, Marley did not shared lady Mealinor's hot-blooded temper. She stayed collected, held her grand mother's glare with some calmness peculiar to herself."Tell me, how it would not when someone as Cersei Lannister sits on the Iron Throne, holding absolutely all the powers." she retorted.

Lady Mealinor sighted one last time before gesturing toward the house behind Marley, "Go" she ordered "There are some important matters waiting for you".

 Marley did so, restraining herself from rolling her eyes. Her grand mother's susceptibility had the talent to get on her nerves pretty easily. 


End file.
